[A-List] The Problem With The Global Warming Skeptics

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Joshua Frank

Countercurrents.org (June 01 2007)


Alexander Cockburn has been making waves with his recent series on
global warming, which has been published in The Nation and online at
CounterPunch.org where he serves as co-editor (and I contribute a weekly
column). In them, Cockburn attacks the logic of those fear-mongering
scientists and all of us uneducated "Greenhousers" who believe humans,
and our industrialized economy, are negatively impacting the planet's
climate.

While I'm quite happy to be dubbed a dumb Greenhouser - make no mistake,
I'm not an intelligent scientist. In fact I'm one of the few radical
environmentalists I know who doesn't believe global warming is the most
immediate threat to life on Earth. Call me crazy, but that trophy, I'm
afraid, is still firmly in the clutches of the world's nuclear powers.

In his articles Cockburn bases much of his argument on the opinion of
one retired chemist, Dr Martin Hertzberg, who worked for the US Navy and
later as an explosions expert for the Bureau of Mines, which functions
under the rubric of the Department of the Interior. Hertzberg's
reasoning goes something like this: global warming is caused by water
vapor and not by carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, according to
Hertzberg, it's never caused by carbon dioxide emissions, no matter the
amount. His belief relies on the largely contested thesis that oceans
are "carbon sinks" which store excessive carbon dioxide and other sediments.

By contrast, most climate scientists insist that carbon dioxide
concentrations are cumulative. So, after they are released, the gas
remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years unlike oceanic water
vapor, which precipitates rather quickly out of the atmosphere as snow
and rain.

Scientific research also challenges the "carbon sink" theory. The most
recent and extensive study to do so was written by eighteen scientists
and published in Science in late April 2007. The research was conducted
by two international scientific expeditions, which studied waters in the
South Pacific near the equator. The work suggests that rather than
sinking, carbon dioxide is instead gobbled up by animals and bacteria
and recycled in the "twilight zone", a shadowy area 100 to 1,000 meters
below the ocean's surface.

"The twilight zone is a critical link between the surface and the deep
ocean", says Ken Buesseler, a biogeochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution who was lead author of the study. "We're interested in what
happens in the twilight zone, what sinks into it and what actually sinks
out of it. Unless the carbon goes all the way down into the deep ocean
and is stored there, the oceans will have little impact on climate change."

If true, Dr Hertzberg's position is in deep water. But there are far
greater problems with this lone scientist than his sketchy position on
global warming or his past history as an explosives expert for the
Bureau of Mines. Indeed Hertzberg may have other reasons for not
challenging the industry-line on climate change. Fact is, Hertzberg
serves as an expert witness for Big Coal, and was even hired by Jim
Walter Resources in a case where the large coal company paid a meager
$3,000 in fines after an explosion in one of their Alabama mines led to
the deaths of thirteen miners. Jim Walter Resources, which pocketed over
$100 million in profits that same year, surely cut Dr Hertzberg a hefty
check for his professional services. His testimony, which was cited by
the presiding judge, likely decreased the fine levied at the company.

Hertzberg cannot be considered an unbiased scientist on the issue of
climate change, as he is a paid consultant for an industry whose
coal-burning power plants produce the single largest source of carbon
dioxide pollution in the US. This, to me, is proof positive that we
ought to disregard Hertzberg's climate science all together.

There are other blatant problems with some of the warming skeptics'
assumptions as well as their possible motivations. In his second piece
on the matter Cockburn quotes the notorious doubter Pat Michaels of the
University of Virginia, who spends a great deal of time critiquing
global warming models. But Michaels, an Environmental Science professor,
was long ago exposed as a pawn of industry. Writing for Harper's in
1995, Ross Gelbspan explained, "Michaels has received more than $115,000
over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate
Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns,
was funded by Western Fuels."

Other holes exist in the skeptic's logic as well. Cockburn correctly
references a 1995 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) that hastily slipped in the following language, which
contradicted much of the original report: "The balance of evidence
suggests a discernible human influence on global climate".

However, it should be noted that since the IPCC's second review of
climate change research in 1995, there has been two additional IPCC
papers, one in 2001 and another this year, both of which argue that the
literature overwhelmingly show that humans are "likely" contributing to
planetary warming.

Sadly, the aforementioned global warming skeptics are in one way or
another on the fossil fuel dole. Aside from Dr Hertzberg, the explosives
expert who does consulting work for Big Coal, and Professor Michaels who
is funded by power companies that operate and own coal fired plants, the
last, and worst, 'scientist' the skeptics, including Cockburn, so
frequently cite is Fredrick Seitz.

For those of you who haven't followed the climate debate over the years,
sourcing the 96 year-old Seitz on global warming, as a friend of mine
put it, is like quoting Judith Miller on Iraq's WMDs. He's a complete
and utter fraud who has been exposed as such time and again. Seitz has
argued that smoking doesn't cause cancer while simultaneously pocketing
mega-bucks from Big Tobacco. He even disputes the fact that CFCs damage
the ozone layer. Seitz would probably tell you it's okay to sprinkle DDT
on your kid's birthday cake if DuPont paid him enough.

Seitz, who along with Edward "father of the atomic bomb" Teller, also
founded the egregious "Atoms for Peace" program, which called for
exploding nukes to excavate harbors, bring natural gas to the surface
and run space ships to Mars. Seitz is certainly not an impartial source
on global warming. He's a hack.

Arguing the in and outs of global warming research is diversionary. I
agree that we ought to be skeptical of Al Gore's past, the carbon offset
market, carbon credits and the eco-economy that's spawned from our papal
induced guilt. We should be aware that the Prius isn't really all that
'green', with its copper loaded engines that are raping the hillsides of
British Columbia. We should know that our eco-friendly Patagonia attire
is made locally, in China. Yet climate change, as I noted earlier, is a
symptom of industrialization. It cannot, and will not, be tamed until we
acknowledge as much.

There is little risk in playing it safe - go ahead and consider the
possibility that human industry is contributing to the warming of the
Earth's atmosphere. The only harm in calling for a dramatic curb in
carbon dioxide emissions, I see, is that large oil and gas companies
will have to radically alter their destructive ways. But if global
warming serves as a gateway for people to openly criticize our global
economy, and God forbid, industrial capitalism - all the better.

_____

Joshua Frank holds a graduate degree in Environmental Conservation from
New York University. He's the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped
Reelect George W Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005) and co-edits
DissidentVoice.org.


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